SMALL MOUTH SOUNDS, Bess
Wohl’s charming send-up of the self-realization movement is getting a
crackerjack production at SpeakEasy Stage (meditating on itself through Feb. 2nd).
Director M. Bevin O’Gara has choreographed space and silence so seamlessly that
our laughter becomes part of the whole. You can’t help yourself when the leader
of the four day, silent retreat greets the newcomers with “I am not the
teacher. You are the teacher. You came here to meet yourself.”
If you’ve been to one
of these seminars which promise “transformation,” and even if you haven’t, you
recognize the absurdity of guaranteeing “instant karma” (with apologies to John
Lennon). O’Gara’s actors express every emotion we need to understand their
mission, all without speaking. For the most part, everyone but the gravel
voiced leader (the cheeky Marianna Bassham) is silent.
Some suffer in
silence. Some (like the hilarious Nael Nacer) suffer in loud, gesticulating
silence when his pompous, full of himself roommate (Sam Simahk) hogs the floor
of their small cabin in the woods, then fills it with irritating incense, which
only serves to aggravate Nacer more. Two sincere women (Kerry A. Dowling and
Celeste Oliva) arrive together, perhaps to strengthen their relationship or
work on their problems.
One flirty young
woman (the funny, cell phone addicted Gigi Watson) has signed up, it would
seem, to work on her feminine wiles. (She needn’t have doubted her charms: Two
of the men seem immediately interested.) The last camper/acolyte is a rather vulnerable,
lost looking middle aged man who may be sick (Barlow Adamson, brilliant as the
sad sack we all worry about).
The script has a few
missteps, like how did the clueless sad sack get through the admission process
or even get interested in the program … and why fool us, along with the
campers, about a certain animal from THE WINTER’S TALE (I’m trying hard not to
give anything away.) Mostly the play is delightfully amusing, especially when
channeling Christopher Durang (the scene where the so-to-speak “fur” flies in
BEYOND THERAPY). The best part of SMALL MOUTH SOUNDS is that Wohl gives us
permission to laugh at the pedantic guru dispensing metaphors as wisdom.
